U.S. Sending More Troops to Africa

ALEXANDRA ZAVIS

Published 7:00 pm, Monday, September 23, 2002

Associated Press Writer

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AP) _ U.S. troops headed to West Africa on Tuesday to safeguard 100 American school children holed up in a rebel-held city after the bloodiest-ever uprising in the Ivory Coast. Frightened residents reported heavy artillery and gunfire.

French troops moved closer to the central city of Bouake as well, ready to rescue their nationals and other Westerners if Ivory Coast's government makes good on a pledge to root out forces behind a bloody coup attempt Thursday.

"A very welcome development," said a relieved James Forlines, director of Free Will Baptist Foreign Missions, a Nashville, Tenn.-based church group that had sent calls for help overnight for the mission school in the cut-off city after rebels breached the school's walls, firing from its grounds.

"It has been a very trying day. It has been a very trying five days," mission official Neil Gilliland said, speaking by telephone from the United States.

The scrambling to safeguard Westerners in the Ivory Coast came amid clashes and growing tensions after the failied coup. At least 270 people have died so far.

An American expeditionary force and British troops already were on the ground in Ivory Coast, Ghanaian and French military and government officials said.

"The U.S. European Command is moving forces to be in a closer position to provide for the safety of American citizens," a statement from the command said.

U.S. military aircraft including three C-130 cargo planes carrying troops and equipment were expected late Tuesday or early Wednesday at a base at Ghana's capital, Accra, a senior official in Ghana's Foreign Ministry said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The base was expected to be the staging area for any U.S. evacuation.

"There's fighting going on now in the area near where this school is located. That's what our concern is," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher explained in Washington about the children and staff of Bouake's International Christian Academy.

Tensions were "understandably high" at the school, Boucher added, but all students and staff are believed safe.

U.S. defense officials spoke of deployment of just under 200 American troops. No general evacuation was planned of Americans, Boucher said.

One hundred French troops moved up from their own staging area at Ivory Coast's capital, Yamoussoukro, where helicopters and trucks were standing by to ferry out foreigners.

"We want to get closer so that if the belligerents _ whoever they are _ attack our nationals, we can intervene very quickly," said French army Col. Charles de Kersabiec said. France is Ivory Coast's former colonial ruler.

A new convoy of French reinforcements rumbled into the capital after dark.

A regional summit planned for this week in Morocco to try to restore peace in the Ivory Coast has been postponed until it is certain Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo can attend, a top Moroccan official said Tuesday.

Gbagbo has pledged full-scale battle to rout the rebels from two cities taken and held since the uprising: Bouake, and Korhogo, a northern opposition stronghold. Military leaders say only concern for civilians has stalled the assault.

The Ivory Coast army claimed already to be on the streets of the city. A journalist reached by telephone in the besieged city said he saw what he believed to be loyalist troops wearing government badges speeding through the town in military vehicles.

The night before, heavy gunfire rang out across the pinned-down city, 220 miles north of the commercial capital, Abidjan.

Rebels climbed the walls of the boarding school for missionary children, home to about 200 foreigners, most of them Americans, church officials say.

"It really was a cross fire, not shooting at the children but a whole lot of ammo going, scaring the kids to death," said Forlines, whose mission has ties to Bouake's International Christian Academy.

In the other rebel-held city, Korhogo, rebels firing automatic weapons into the air began ordering people out of the town center and back into their houses, a resident said by phone. No loyalist soldiers had been seen in the town, the resident added.

The uprising _ with a core group of 750-800 ex-soldiers angry over their dismissal from the army for suspected disloyalty _ poses Ivory Coast's worst crisis since its first-ever coup in 1999.

A lagoon-side city of high rises and multi-lane highways, the commercial capital, Abidjan, had been the region's anchor of stability and prosperity until a 1990s economic downturn, followed by the shattering coup.

About 20,000 French and thousands of other Westerners made their homes there. None are yet known to have been hurt in the five days of fighting.

Far more exposed are immigrants from neighboring Muslim countries, many of whom have already been attacked, arrested or seen their homes burned by paramilitary police, as the uprising sparks deadly rivalries between the mainly Muslim north and the predominantly Christian south.

A key opposition leader with a strong northern Muslim following, hiding out in a foreign embassy, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that security forces tried to kill him on the day of the coup attempt.

"It's clear they are using this situation to try to liquidate and eliminate people in my party," Alassane Dramane Ouattara told the AP by telephone from the French Embassy, where he fled during the uprising.